12. Abraham Lincoln’s Mental Breakdowns Were so Severe that he Would Often Collapse
There is no question that Lincoln was subject to periods of melancholy throughout his life and as a young man he’d experienced the “hypo,” short for hypochondria. Still, Abraham Lincoln led the United States through the American Civil War, preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Before the age of positive thinking and cognitive therapy, Lincoln learned to live with negative thoughts and not dwell on them. Although most of Abraham Lincoln’s written references to depression were in a series of 1841-1842 letters to Joshua Speed, Lincoln’s most profound quote on his own personal depression comes from another source.
On January 1, 1841, Lincoln broke up with Mary Todd – the woman he would marry a year later. A few weeks after his breakup, Lincoln wrote a letter to John T. Stuart, his first law partner. In the letter he mentioned, “I am now the most miserable man living. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.” Despite his constant suicidal thoughts, experts suggest that it was his lifelong depression that gave him the strength to handle the crises of his years as president.